Guest Bedroom: DIY Drawer Liner Using Wrapping Paper

My next project for the guest bedroom was to put some drawer liners into the dresser and the night stands. I knew that if I was going to expect Jocelyn to actually put clothes in that dresser, the drawers were going to need to be lined since the dresser really isn't the greatest quality and no one wants to find little splinters in their clothes or have the wood pull at the clothes at all.

So, being the person that I am and not really liking to spend money, I searched Pinterest for some DIY ideas to make my own drawer liners. I found a couple ideas and the one I ended up going with used wrapping paper and clear contact paper. I got the contact paper from Wal Mart and the wrapping paper at Party City (It was the only store I could find wrapping paper that fit my color scheme).

To get the sizes I needed, I used an Observer to measure out the drawer sizes (The Observer can be used for SO many more things than just for reading!) and then used that to mark out the dimensions on the wrapping paper before cutting the wrapping paper down to size. It was easier to get the newspaper into the drawers than it was mark it out on the roll of wrapping paper.

I then cut the contact paper down to the length that I needed it to be, leaving some extra at the end so I would be sure that I had enough to wrap around the ends, and then attempted to get it started as straight as possible and rolled it over the wrapping paper (that wasn't always successful). 

After I had them all done, I trimmed them down where needed to so they would fit into the drawers and put all the drawer back in. Since both the wrapping paper and the contact paper were rolled up, the edges of the liners stuck up in a few places, so I ended up using some painter's tape to keep the corners down. I probably could have put them under some books or something for a while and gotten them to flatten out, but I'm impatient, so I went the tape route.

I think it cost me less about $8 for the supplies and I have wrapping paper and contact paper left over for other things as well.

Here's the finished product!

Other guest bedroom projects:

DIY Chalk Paint - Headboard and Night Stands

DIY Chalk Paint - Coral Dresser

Guest Bedroom: Painted Headboard and Night Stands with DIY Chalk Paint

My cousin, Jocelyn, has moved in with us for eight weeks while she is on her final rotation for PT School. When she's done in Omaha she will be DONE with school and will be Dr. Jocelyn! How awesome!

Well, knowing that she was going to be moving in with us inspired me to actually do something with our guest bedroom and bathroom finally. Those two rooms have stayed the same ol' blah rooms that they were when we moved in for the past year and a half so I'm excited to change them up a little finally.

Here's what the bedroom looked like before I started making all the changes:

Not bad, but definitely nothing special -- that's for sure. 

I'm not going to show the finished quite yet, but I'm going to share a few projects that I've done for the room for now and then I can share what it looks like all put together!

First off, we painted the whole room. It changed from the "builder beige" it was to a gray color "Rope" by Behr.

Right after we were done painting the room, I got to work on painting some of the furniture. 

First up was the headboard. Trent had bought me the headboard for my 23rd birthday, my first birthday after moving to Omaha and living in an apartment that wasn't a dorm room. I felt kind of bad for wanting to paint it, but I'm glad that he gave me the go-ahead to do what I wanted to it. 

After I was done with the headboard, I also painted the two nightstands that were in the room the same color. I had bought the nightstands shortly after we moved into the house from some thrift store. They had gotten a bunch of the nightstands from an old hotel that was closing or remodeling or something like that. I was just happy to get two matching night stands for a pretty decent price.

I used a recipe from Pinterest and made my own chalk paint to paint these pieces (not to be confused with chalkboard paint). The most famous of chalk paints is Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint. This paint was a little too expensive to me, so I made my own using regular Valspar paint in Flat finish, Plaster of Paris, and water. I used my go-to white paint color, "Honeymilk" 

The benefit of using chalk paint is that it rarely requires any preparation of the surface such as sanding or priming and can be used on pretty much any surface including furniture that already has some type of varnish or something on it. It ends up with a very nice silky finish as well (I used poly to cover it, though, so it didn't stay that way). I also like it because, when it dries, all the brush stroke lines that are on it from the brush dry flat, so it definitely gets better as it dries.

I used the recipe of about 3 cups paint to 1 cup Plaster of Paris to 1/4 cup water. I mixed the Plaster of Paris and the water first to ensure there weren't any lumps and then mixed in the paint.

The paint is a lot more watered down with this mixture, so it took me about 4 coats to cover everything good enough, but it dried fast so I could pretty much just paint continuously without having to wait for it to dry and it was better than having to sand or strip the furniture before I painted.

After I got the number of layers on that I wanted, I topped it off with two coats of Polycrylic.

For the night stands, I just spray painted the hardware with a flat black paint and put them back on.

Here's what both of those pieces look like before and after:

You can kind of see in this picture below what it looked like after a few coats. You can still see the wood through the paint and you can see the brush strokes as well. I just needed to keep going until that was all gone. I got quite a few episodes of Damages watched on Netflix in the evenings while I was painting 4+ coats on 3 different pieces of furniture! 

Now I know that this wasn't a very exciting post, but there will be better before and afters after I get through all the little projects. :)

Stay tuned for more projects I did for the guest bedroom!

Girls' Weekend - Pinterest Party

This past weekend some of my bestest friends all got together and had our first Pinterest Party.

Everyone brought a craft to do and food to eat (most from Pinterest - hence the "Pinterest Party") and we just hung out and caught up while eating, drinking, and crafting.

Miss Harper Lee joined the girls' day for the first time this year. Last year when we all got together she was still in her mommy's belly. It was so nice to be able to have her entertain us all! She even had a mini photo shoot for us wearing a piece of fabric on her head in different ways. She was a good sport and sooo cute!!

After Harper's photo shoot, we got started on the crafts and busted out the wine and dug into the food. 

For our food we had Puppy Chow, Sangria, Cookie Dough Dip with Teddy Grahams, Beef Enchilada Dip, Strawberry Shortcake Rice Krispie Treats, Mini Cherry and Caramel Cheesecakes, and wine, of course! I was very impressed by all the food everyone brought. It was awesome to see so many of the recipes you see on Pinterest all the time actually be made and all in one place! They were definitely as good as they look on the internet!  Next time I'll have to remember to photograph all the food!

As for everyone's crafts, 

Mallory was going to work on some crafts for her wedding in June, like making the boutonnieres and a board for people to sign, but I think she ended up helping everyone else and talking the whole time, so I'm not so sure any of her crafts got done :)

Meghan made a glass gem covered night light jar for a friend like this one.

Carey painted some different quotes and sayings onto some canvases, 

Lauren painted some bird houses in fun spring colors, 

Bailey painted the first of many wooden boxes that will house all the pictures and other random things from each different place that they travel to (like these), 

Kaela used a frame and put a boarder of wine corks around the outside of it and the saying "Always carry a corkscrew and the wine will provide itself" it looks almost just like this - it turned out great!, 

and I painted some little pots, drew a herringbone pattern on them with a silver metallic Sharpie, filled it with fake grass and then put some jelly bean eggs in it for a fun spring/Easter decoration. They are almost exactly like this.

Here's a picture of one of my two pots close up. Again, if I would have been thinking, I would have taken a picture of each persons' craft close up... oh well...

The jelly beans seem to mysteriously keep disappearing out of the grass too... It makes me laugh!

You can't see everyone's items very well in this picture, but here we are with our crafts!

 

We ordered pizza for supper and spent most of the night around the table working on our stuff, eating and talking about everything that's been going on in our lives. 

Everyone hard at work

After our crafts were done, we cleared the table and played a game of Cards Against Humanity. We had a few laughs at some ridiculous and inappropriate things, but I was happy that everyone has a great sense of humor! Miss Harper even wanted to play for a while before it was her bedtime!

After we went through the entire deck, some girls needed to go to bed (like Lauren),

but a few of us stayed up until very early in the morning (I'm pretty sure it was after 3 before I got to bed). 

I loved having the time to just sit and chat with my favorite people. It was like college again - when we all lived in the same place and never had to go home - we were just in the next room or right down the hall from each other. Good times! I am so happy that we are all still good friends! I wish we could all get together more often and I cannot wait until we do it again!

What have we been up to?

I haven't written anything in quite a while, so this is just to capture most of the "exciting" stuff that has been going on the past five weeks or so. Here's a quick run down of what we've been up to with some pictures.

This is here A) because it's funny and
B) so the next picture doesn't show up first

WARNING: The first few pictures of this post are kinda gross!! View at your own risk!

Trent and I spent three of he last 5 weeks with itchiness from poison ivy. We came in contact with it while helping weed out some bushes. It made for an interesting time! I won't be sad if I never have to go through that ever again!

My arms after about a week and a half

ANGRY Leg!!!!

We made our first update to our bedroom and bought a smaller TV and mounted it. It is nice to have our dresser emptied!

We still have to hide the cords and stuff, but we can get that done when we paint the room and everything else SOMEDAY. This is a small change, but exciting to me!

Dresser with no TV on it!!

We started using our fireplace when it got cold. Mattie quickly discovered that she loved it!

Mattie also enjoyed snuggling up in our bed in the cold weather, too!

Morningside's homecoming was at the beginning of October. A few of us made the trip to Sioux City and reunited for the day.

Luke came to town for work. So we got to hang out with him briefly for a night. Just two more weeks until his wedding!

We went to my mom's for a weekend to help her out with some stuff around the house. I didn't get any pictures of the hard work we did inside, but Trent and Jared worked hard outside to put in some edgers around a section in the backyard. I also didn't get a good picture of what it looked like after, but I swear it's great!

Look at those handsome guys hard at work!

While we were in town, we also got to see Alex play in a football game and see him score a sweet touchdown!

 

His fan club!

Trent and I bought a new car in October, so that meant trading in his Camry. Before it happened, I got a little nostalgic about it just purely because of the memories that we've made in that car. We used to spend a lot of time driving around in his car and even had our first kiss in there! It was just pretty crazy to think that we were never going to be in that car again. Trent even got a little emotional when he realized we were getting ready to say good-bye to the car for the last time. Not quite for the same girly reasons I did, though :)

Bad picture - but giving his car a little good-bye hug!

DQ after getting the new car!

I also got my very first sewing machine in October. My mom found it at a sale for $5! It's not new by far by it's new to me and it works!! I even sewed my first things! I had to recall everything I had learned from Grandma over the years and even consult the directions, but I hemmed a curtain and sewed the ends of my table runner! Woot! The possibilities are endless now!

My sewing machine! (That's the curtain I hemmed on there, too!)

My burlap table runner

Two weekends ago, I got to go to the Rascal Flatts concert with some of my family members and we had some fun in Des Moines while we were there. It was AWE.SOME. 

I have a lot of pictures of that, though, so I'll save the rest of the details for a separate post.

When I got home from Des Moines, Trent's parents came to stay at our house. We did some shopping during the day and then carved pumpkins and watched a movie on Saturday night. Jan and Trent made some Kringla too. Yum!

  

Our pumpkins and the kringla

 Mattie continued to be cute during the last five weeks!

Using the arm rest like a human

 We had our second Halloween in our house this past week. It was a busy evening in our neighborhood with all the kids out in their costumes. We had 280 trick-or-treaters this year. It was a chilly evening, but it was fun! I started the Halloween Pandora station about an hour into the evening, so next year, I'll be even more prepared for that and get some real good tunes going!

Lastly, this past weekend, we went to Ankeny to visit Trent's family, and I went to Ankeny's big craft fair again this year with some of the girls. I bought a new scarf that I love an got Mattie a new collar, but other than that, I saw a lot of things that I said "Oh, I could make that!" I'm sure I won't ever make those things, but it's a good thought, anyway! The craft fair was a fun time and it's always something I look forward to every year!

My cute little hat that I found!

Some cute things I found that I could TOTALLY make myself!

I think that pretty much sums up the majority of the "exciting" stuff that's been going on here. Now hopefully I can get back to keeping up with posting about things close to the time when they actually happen!